Strays
by spectacled spiderhunter
Summary: Two times absolutely does not make a habit. The one where murderers make friends, and it's all terribly sweet. – Clint, Natasha, Loki.


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It starts when Loki looks skinny, like he hasn't been eating enough again and goddammit, Clint should not be noticing this or caring. But he remembers, goddammit, he can't forget.

"_I'm falling," Loki gasped, clutching at the air, wild-eyed. _

"_Calm down," Clint said, from a few feet away, wary of approaching._

"_I was – I am – falling." Loki repeated it like Clint didn't understand. "_Falling_."_

"_My king. Sir. Sir." Gingerly, Clint touched his hand to Loki's arm. "Loki."_

" _Hawkling?"_

"_Yeah, I'm here. I'm the hawk, right? So, if you're falling, I'll teach you how to fly." Incredibly, he'd said the right thing. Loki relaxed, a slow release, and his breathing settled. _

_Clint had stayed there for hours before he could bring himself to move from Loki's side._

_._

_._

Everyone thought Captain America would be the one to bring in a stray kitten but in the end, no, it's actually Clint. Nick looks like he's getting a migraine. Natasha looks blank. Well, blanker. Phil (who happens not to be dead) looks as if he's gotten used to it by now. The kitten looks smug. And more than two-thirds terrified, although Clint's probably the only one to notice.

Did he mention? The kitten's a metaphor. It's more of a puma. That can do magic. And other things.

Yeah, so it's Loki.

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(No one has tried to hit Clint yet, so maybe this might work out.)

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Clint has his head in a first aid kit and Loki's just said something bloody stupid and is just bloody in general, really.

"Fuck Thor," Clint says, picking the bullets out of Loki's chest. "This isn't about Thor. This is something simple. How bout it? I don't kill you now, and in exchange you don't kill me later, okay. Let's start there."

"Do not patronize me, mortal." Low, like a warning. With a chestful of bullets and a skin of still-bleeding cuts, Loki could probably easily kill him. What matters though, is that he won't. Well, probably. The odds are never one-hundred percent on anything, not in this business, but Clint takes worse chances every fucking day.

"Not patronizing. Just trying to stop you from over thinking things. This doesn't mean we're not enemies. It does mean, um, though, that we don't have to be." The comm crackles back on in his ear. "You'd better scram, unless you feel like being hugged to death and then clapped in a containment cell."

Loki scrams.

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Of course, one week later Loki turns up in his apartment at 2 in the morning. Judging by the state of his hair, he's been over thinking things.

Clint wants to say that the world's simple really, that killing is a matter of physics and well-developed arm muscles, as simple as a trigger; that saving a life is as easy as taking it, because there's the same trigger and you just make a different choice. He wants to say that if everyone looked at the world down an arrow's point they might understand better, but you know what? It's 2 o'clock in the fucking morning goddammit, he does not have the mind for philosophical BS right now. So he throws a pillow at Loki, yells "Fuck off," and pretends to sleep. (Well, he is a spy/ assassin/ ninja. Actually going back to sleep would be bad form.)

"I do not understand you," Loki says.

"You don't need to," Clint tells him. "Just don't kill my friends or make me kills my friends again and we will get along splendidly, okay?"

Loki doesn't answer, but he also doesn't leave. Clint's getting bored of this faking-sleep bullshit, so he gets up and shuffles to the kitchen. (Pretends to shuffle, really, Clint only actually shuffles when both his legs are broken, but well, it's the look of the thing.)

He makes Loki some warm milk. What? That's what they gave him back at the circus. It's one of too few good memories, don't fucking question it.

"This is disgusting," Loki says, but shuts up soon afterward, perhaps realizing his complaining only makes him sound like a whiny teenager (which he is, apparently, according to relative aging he would probably only be nineteen or something equally ridiculous, and that's a fact Clint doesn't like to think about too long because it makes him want to break things. More things then he does already, anyway.)

Then Loki's gone and Clint's going to actual-sleep, because he needs at least four hours of it to stay looking_ this damn good._

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When Natasha and Loki don't think he's looking, they try to stab each other. They are very creative. Honestly, he had no idea so many things were so pointy.

Natasha and Loki also have this competition where they kill anyone trying to kill Clint.

"I owe you a debt," Loki says smoothly, when he mentions it. Then he stalks off, leaving Clint to deal with the bloody body. It's like cat bringing in a dead mouse: sort of sweet, but not really, because of the guts and the stink and all, but fuck-that, Clint's a murderer, his best friend's a murder, he's allowed to find Loki's actions _sweet_.

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Natasha hadn't ever needed a hug because she was never a fucking baby. She had just needed someone to believe she had a choice. Clint did. And she made her choice, and he believed in that too.

"I looked at him and made a call," Clint tells her afterward.

Natasha nods.

That's it.

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One night they're eating take-out Chinese when Loki turns up. Clint slides half a place to the right and Natasha half a place to the left, and Loki sits suspiciously because he still doesn't trust them.

"My brother enjoys red bean buns," Thor announces through a truly impressive mouthful of lemon chicken.

Loki blinks, thrown that his not-brother had noticed, and trying hard not to be pleased.

"Personally," Tony begins.

"No one _cares_, Tony," Steve says tiredly.

"That was rude! Did you hear that? Someone heard that, didn't they? Captain America was rude to me! If Captain America is rude is that like imperialism? You recorded that, right JARVIS?"

"Indeed, sir."

"You all heard him, right?" Tony waves his chop-sticks wildly.

"No one cares, Tony," Bruce says, hiding a smile.

As Tony rears up in mock indignation, Natasha tries to stab Loki with her high-heels. He tries to stab her with his chop-sticks. Neither succeeds, but moments pass, and then everyone is trying to hide their smiles.

And you know what?

They're failing.

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- the end


End file.
